Great Throughts Treasury

"Sit. Stay. Heal."

"So don't take anything for granted, and don't believe everything you're told. Without being cynical or gullible, look for the living quality of the dharma. Recognize impermanence and suffering and egolessness at the kitchen-sink level, and be inquisitive about your reactions. Find out for yourself about peace and whether or not it's true that our fundamental situation is joyful."

"So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn't sit for even one, that's the journey of the warrior."

"So for us, taking refuge means that we feel that the way to live is to cut the ties, to cut the umbilical cord and alone start the journey of being fully human, without confirmation from others. Taking refuge is the way that we begin cultivating the openness and the goodheartedness that allow us to be less and less dependent. We might say, "We shouldn't be dependent anymore, we should be open," but that isn't the point. The point is that you begin where you are, you see what a child you are, and you don't criticize that. You begin to explore, with a lot of humor and generosity toward yourself, all the places where you cling, and every time you cling, you realize, "Ah! This is where, through my mindfulness and my tonglen and everything that I do, my whole life is a process of learning how to make friends with myself." On the other hand, this need to cling, this need to hold the hand, this cry for Mom, also shows you that that's the edge of the nest. Stepping through right there-making a leap-becomes the motivation for cultivating maitri. You realize that if you can step through that doorway you're going forward, you're becoming more of an adult, more of a complete person, more whole."

"So how do we celebrate impermanence, suffering, and egolessness in our everyday lives? When impermanence presents itself in our lives, we can recognize it as impermanence. We don't have to look for opportunities to do this. When your pen runs out of ink- recognize it as impermanence. Then we can recognize our reaction to impermanence. This is where curiosity comes in. Usually we just react habitually to events in our lives. We become resentful or delighted, excited or disappointed. There's no intelligence involved, no cheerfulness. But when we recognize impermanence as impermanence, we can also notice what our reaction to impermanence is. This is called mindfulness, awareness, curiosity, inquisitiveness, paying attention. Whatever we call it, it's a very helpful practice. The practice of coming to know ourselves completely."

"So we say we take refuge in the buddha, we take refuge in the dharma, we take refuge in the sangha. In the oryoki meal chant we say, "The buddha's virtues are inconceivable, the dharma's virtues are inconceivable, the sangha's virtues are inconceivable," and "I prostrate to the buddha, I prostrate to the dharma, I prostrate to the sangha, I prostrate respectfully and always to these three.--Well, we aren't talking about finding comfort in the buddha, dharma, and sangha. We aren't talking about prostrating in order to be safe. The buddha, we say traditionally, is the example of what we also can be. The buddha is the awakened one, and we too are the buddha. It's simple. We are the buddha. It's not just a way of speaking."

"Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things."

"Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all others behind. Their suffering continues, unrelieved by our personal escape."

"Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic - this is the spiritual path."

"Strangely enough, even though all beings would like to live in peace, our method for obtaining peace over the generations seems not to be very effective: we seek peace and happiness by going to war. Maybe we come home from work and we?re tired and we just want some peace; but at home all hell is breaking loose for one reason or another, and so we start yelling at people."

"Suffering comes from wishing things were different. Misery a self-inflicted, when we are expecting the ?ideal? to overcome the ?actual,? or needing things (or people, or places) to be different for us so we can then be happy."

"That's when our understanding goes deeper, when we find that the present moment is a pretty vulnerable place and that this can be completely unnerving and completely tender at the same time."

"The basic creative energy of life - life force - bubbles up and courses through all of existence."

"The Buddha?s principal message that day was that holding on to anything blocks wisdom. Any conclusion that we draw must be let go. The only way to fully understand the bodhichitta teachings, the only way to practice them fully, is to abide in the unconditional openness of the prajna, patiently cutting through all our tendencies to hang on."

"The cultivation of the noble heart and mind of bodhicitta is a personal journey. The very life we have is our working basis; the very life we have is our journey to enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something we're going to achieve after we follow the instructions, and then get it right. In fact when it comes to awakening the heart and mind, you can't get it right."

"The essence of Bravery is being without self-deception. However it?s not so easy to take a straight look at what we do. Seeing ourselves clearly is initially uncomfortable and embarrassing. As we train in clarity and steadfastness, we see things we?d prefer to deny ? judgementalness, pettiness, arrogance. These are not sins but temporary and workable habits of mind. The more we get to know them, the more they lose their power. This is how we come to trust that our basic nature is utterly simple, free of struggle between good and bad."

"The essence of generosity is letting go. Pain is always a sign that we are holding on to something - usually ourselves."

"The essence of life is that it?s challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride."

"The essence of the fourth noble truth is the eightfold path. Everything we do?our discipline, effort, meditation, livelihood, and every single thing that we do from the moment we?re born until the moment we die?we can use to help us to realize our unity and our completeness with all things. We can use our lives, in other words, to wake up to the fact that we?re not separate: the energy that causes us to live and be whole and awake and alive is just the energy that creates everything, and we?re part of that. We can use our lives to connect with that, or we can use them to become resentful, alienated, resistant, angry, bitter. As always, it?s up to us."

"The experience of certain feelings can seem particularly pregnant with desire for resolution: loneliness, boredom, anxiety. Unless we can relax with these feelings, it's very hard to stay in the middle when we experience them. We want victory or defeat, praise or blame. For example, if somebody abandons us, we don't want to be with that raw discomfort. Instead, we conjure up a familiar identity of ourselves as a hapless victim. Or maybe we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is. We automatically want to cover over the pain in one way or another, Identifying with victory or victimhood."

"The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn?t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don?t have to feel it?s happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long as we?re addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot."

"The ground of not causing harm is mindfulness, a sense of clear seeing with respect and compassion for what it is we see. This is what basic practice shows us. But mindfulness doesn?t stop with formal meditation. It helps us relate with all the details of our lives. It helps us see and hear and smell, without closing our eyes or our ears or our noses. It?s a lifetime?s journey to relate honestly to the immediacy of our experience and to respect ourselves enough not to judge it. As we become more wholehearted in this journey of gentle honesty, it comes as quite a shock to realize how much we?ve blinded ourselves to some of the ways in which we cause harm. Our style is so ingrained that we can?t hear when people try to tell us, either kindly or rudely, that maybe we?re causing some harm by the way we are or the way we relate with others. We?ve become so used to the way we do things that somehow we think that others are used to it too. It?s painful to face how we harm others, and it takes a while."

"The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are."

"The happiness we seek cannot be found through grasping, trying to hold on to things. It cannot be found through getting serious and uptight about wanting things to go in the direction we think will bring happiness. We are always taking hold of the wrong end of the stick. The point is that the happiness we seek is already here and it will be found through relaxation and letting go rather than through struggle."

"The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion."

"The meditation technique itself cultivate precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go - qualities that are innate within us."

"The middle way is wide open, but it's tough going, because it goes against the grain of an ancient neurotic pattern that we all share. When we feel lonely, when we feel hopeless, what we want to do is move to the right or the left. We don't want to sit and feel what we feel. We don't want to go through the detox. Yet the middle way encourages us to do just that. It encourages us to awaken the bravery that exists in everyone without exception, including you and me."

"The most heartbreaking thing of all is how we cheat ourselves of the present moment."

"The most important aspect of being on the spiritual path may be to just keep moving."

"The natural warmth that emerges when we experience pain includes all the heart qualities: love, compassion, gratitude, tenderness in any form. It also includes loneliness, sorrow, and the shakiness of fear. Before these vulnerable feelings harden, before the storylines kick in, these generally unwanted feelings are pregnant with kindness, with openness and caring. These feelings that we?ve become so accomplished at avoiding can soften us, can transform us. The openheartedness of natural warmth is sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant. The practice is to train in not automatically fleeing from uncomfortable tenderness when it arises."

"The next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This is where the courage comes in. Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear. When I was first married, my husband said I was one of the bravest people he knew. When I asked him why, he said because I was a complete coward but went ahead and did things anyhow."

"The next time you lose heart and you can?t bear to experience what you?re feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. That?s basically the instruction that Dzigar Kongtrl gave me. And I now pass it on to you. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering?yours, mine, and that of all living beings."

"The only real obstacle is ignorance. When you say "Mom!" or when you need a hand to hold, if you refuse to look at the whole situation, you aren't able to see it as a teaching, an inspiration to realize that this is the place where you could go further, where you could love yourself more. If you can't say to yourself at that point, "I'm going to look into this, because that's all I need to do to continue this journey of going forward and opening more," then you're committed to the obstacle of ignorance."

"The path of meditation and the path of our lives altogether ha to do with curiosity, inquisitiveness."

"The point was not to try to achieve some special state or to transcend the sounds and movement of ordinary life. Rather we were encouraged to relax more completely with our environment and to appreciate the world around us and the ordinary truth that takes place in every moment."

"The practice of meditation helps us to get to know this basic energy really well, with tremendous honesty and warmheartedness, and we begin to figure out for ourselves what is poison and what is medicine, which means something different for each of us."

"The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality."

"The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are."

"The slogan "Be grateful to everyone" is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected. Through doing that, we also make peace with people we dislike. More to the point, being around people we dislike is often a catalyst for making friends with ourselves."

"The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find out that something is not what we thought. that is what we're going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought."

"The Truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen."

"The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last?that they don?t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security."

"The whole process of meditation is one of creating that good ground, that cradle of loving-kindness where we actually are nurtured. What's being nurtured is our confidence in our own wisdom, our own health, and our own courage, our own good heartedness. We develop some sense that the way we are the kind of personality that we have and the way we express life - is good, and that by being who we are completely and by totally accepting that and having respect for ourselves, we are standing on the ground of warriorship."

"There are four maras... The descriptions of these four maras show us four ways in which we, just like the buddha, are seemingly attacked: The first mara is called devaputra mara. It has to do with seeking pleasure. The second one called skandha mara, has to do with how we always try to re-create ourselves, try to get some ground back, try to be who we think we are. The third mara is called klesha mara. It has to do with how we use our emotions to keep ourselves dumb or asleep. The fourth one, yama mara, has to do with the fear of death."

"There are many changes in the weather of a day."

"There are six ways of describing this kind of cool loneliness. They are less desire, contentment, avoiding unnecessary activity, complete discipline, not wondering in the world of desire, and not seeking security from one's discursive thoughts"

"There are three habitual methods that human beings use for relating to troubling habits such as laziness, anger or self-pity. I call these the three futile strategies?the strategies of attacking, indulging, and ignoring. The futile strategy of attacking is particularly popular. When we see our habit we condemn ourselves?we criticize and shame ourselves. The futile strategy of indulging is equally common. We justify or even applaud our habit: ?It?s just the way I am. I don?t deserve discomfort or inconvenience? The strategy of ignoring is quite effective, least for a while. We dissociate, space out, go numb. We do anything we can to distance ourselves from the naked truth of our habits."

"There are three truths- traditionally called three marks- of our existence: Impermanence, suffering and egolessness."

"There is a story about a group of people climbing to the top of a mountain. It turns out it's pretty steep, and as soon as they get up to a certain height, a couple of people look down and see how far it is, and they completely freeze; they had come up against their edge and they couldn't go beyond it. The fear was so great that they couldn't move. Other people tripped on ahead, laughing and talking, but as the climb got steeper and more scary, more people began to get scared and freeze. All the way up this mountain there were places where people met their edge and just froze and couldn't go any farther. The people who made it to the top looked out and were very happy to have made it to the top. The moral of the story is that it really doesn't make any difference where you meet your edge; just meeting it is the point. Life is a whole journey of meeting your edge again and again. That's where you're challenged; that's where, if you're a person who wants to live, you start to ask yourself questions like, "Now, why am I so scared? What is it that I don't want to see? Why can't I go any further than this?" The people who got to the top were not the heroes of the day. It's just that they weren't afraid of heights; they are going to meet their edge somewhere else. The ones who froze at the bottom were not the losers. They simply stopped first and so their lesson came earlier than the others. However, sooner or later everybody meets his or her edge."

"There isn?t any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life."